• Submitted by: admin
• Ciego de Avila
• Environment
• Havana
• national
• Santiago de Cuba
• Science and Technology
• Society
• Business and Economy
• 12 / 16 / 2009

---

Banana growers in the central Cuban province of Ciego de Ávila increased the plantations in over 500 hectares if compared with last year.

This effort has to do with the national strategy to increase food production.

Currently, the cultivated area is 4 688 hectares, considerably bigger than the plantations existing before the devastation of the territory caused by hurricanes Gustav, Ike and Paloma.

Rolando Macías Cárdenas, deputy delegate of the Ministry of Agriculture in the territory explained that  retrieving the plantations allowed to harvest 36 682 tons of banana from January to November, this figure is slightly lower than the plan, but benefited people from nine provinces, especially Havana City and Santiago de Cuba.

Macías Cárdenas pointed out the effort of both state and rural sector farmers to face the drought and the shortage of fuel, while aiming to regain the banana storing figures achieved two decades before when the territory  produced 80 thousand tons a year.

Other species planted were the Enano guantanamero, Gran enano, Manzano INVIT and Zeta-30, the last one being the strongest to hurricane winds.

Growers use three quadrants of the watering machines for potato plantations, and the remaining section for banana and other crops, in order to diversify the production.

Source: www.invasor.cu